The Statehouse in Trenton is shown in this file photo. Political contributions from public contractors dropped sharply last year. Star-Ledger file photo

TRENTON — The once-plump political action committees that funded Middlesex County Democratic campaigns have withered, a Star-Ledger analysis shows.

Last year, The Star-Ledger reported on how a network of political action committees in and around Middlesex County from 2008 to 2011 pumped more than $2 million into political campaigns. Most of the donations came from public contractors that would have been banned from giving directly because of state and local pay-to-play laws, which prohibit the practice of trading contributions for contracts.

Those donations soon dried up.

In 2011, seven of the committees took in more than $515,000 from public contractors. In 2012, two of those committees were not active at all, while the other five took in a total of $80,350 from the contractors, according to data released yesterday by the state Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC).

CME Associates, an engineering firm, was the single largest donor to the PACs in 2011, giving $243,500. Last year, it gave them nothing. CME's total political contributions declined from $538,000 in 2011 to $207,000 last year.

The decline in PAC activity played a large role in a sharp drop in public contractor donations, according to the commission.

"The scrutiny that the Star-Ledger and other publications gave to the issue really helped curb the contributions that were going from contractors to PACs," said ELEC Executive Director Jeffrey Brindle, who noted that his agency has been calling attention to the issue for years. "That’s all to the good. It certainly was a way to circumvent the pay-to-play law."

Over all, contractors donated $7.62 million to campaigns and political committees in 2012, a 23 percent decrease from 2011. It’s the biggest drop since 2008, when donations fell off by 26 percent.

Brindle said donations to PACs altogether fell from $1.7 million in 2011 to about $1 million in 2012.

Also, top executives from one of the state’s largest contractors &madash; Birdsall Services Group &madash; last month were indicted for allegedly seeking to circumvent pay-to-play laws. Birdsall allegedly had employees write checks for $300 or less &madash; the threshold for reporting them to the state &madash; and then reimbursed them.

Last year, more than a quarter of political contributions from contractors came from just 10 of them, who gave a combined $2.1 million. Remington & Vernick, an engineering firm, was number one at $ 457,050, followed by T&M Associate at $366,565 and Pennoni Associates at $234,945.

The biggest recipients were county candidates.

The unsuccessful reelection campaign of former Burlington County freeholder Bruce Garganio and Mary Ann O’Brien was the single largest recipient of public contractor contributions, taking in $192,200. Freeholder campaigns took up the next three top spots as well.

Senate President Steven Sweeney’s (D-Gloucester) re-election campaign received $109,550 from the contractors &madash; the sixth most in the state.

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New Jersey has a state pay-to-play law that bans state contractors from giving more than $300 to candidates for governor, state political parties, county and municipal political parties and legislative leadership committees. But there’s also a patchwork of pay-to-play laws at the local and county level whose rules differ.

Brindle’s agency wants to adopt a single, statewide law that would apply the rules uniformly.

These changes would help improve enforcement while broadening disclosure,’’ Brindle said.

The Star-Ledger report on PACs detailed how some of themwere linked to two prominent New Jersey Democrats: Assemblyman John Wisniewski, the state Democratic Chairman, and state Sen. Bob Smith (both D-Middlesex).

One of the PACs, Democracy in Motion, was set up initially by Nicholas Fixmer, who was at the time Wisniewski's chief of staff.The PAC's treasurer, Christina Montorio, was another former Wisniewski staffer. In addition, Mary Lou McCormick, a legislative aide to Wisniewski, was paid by another PAC, Raritan Bay Leadership Fund, to prepare its reports. Yet another PAC, the 19th District Leadership Fund, is named after the district Wisniewski represents.

Democracy in Motion and The Raritan Bay Leadership Fund, which took in a combined $114,200 in 2011, did not raise any money from public contractors last year. The 19th District Leadership Fund, which raised $51,500 in 2011 from public contractors, took in just $2,750 from those donors last year.

As for Smith, Middlesex County Democratic Chairman Peter Barnes Jr. last year named him as being in charge of a fundraising committee to "handle all the PACs."